Through its work, ICAN has helped to fill this legal gap. An important argument in the rationale for prohibiting nuclear weapons is the unacceptable human suffering that a nuclear war will cause. ICAN is a coalition of non-governmental organizations from around 100 different countries around the globe. The coalition has been a driving force in prevailing upon the world’s nations to pledge to cooperate with all relevant stakeholders in efforts to stigmatise, prohibit and eliminate nuclear weapons. To date, 108 states have made such a commitment, known as the Humanitarian Pledge.

Furthermore, ICAN has been the leading civil society actor in the endeavour to achieve a prohibition of nuclear weapons under international law. On 7 July 2017, 122 of the UN member states acceded to the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons. As soon as the treaty has been ratified by 50 states, the ban on nuclear weapons will enter into force and will be binding under international law for all the countries that are party to the treaty.

The Norwegian Nobel Committee is aware that an international legal prohibition will not in itself eliminate a single nuclear weapon, and that so far neither the states that already have nuclear weapons nor their closest allies support the nuclear weapon ban treaty. The Committee wishes to emphasize that the next steps towards attaining a world free of nuclear weapons must involve the nuclear-armed states. This year’s Peace Prize is therefore also a call upon these states to initiate serious negotiations with a view to the gradual, balanced and carefully monitored elimination of the almost 15,000 nuclear weapons in the world. Five of the states that currently have nuclear weapons – the USA, Russia, the United Kingdom, France and China – have already committed to this objective through their accession to the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons of 1970. The Non-Proliferation Treaty will remain the primary international legal instrument for promoting nuclear disarmament and preventing the further spread of such weapons.

It is now 71 years since the UN General Assembly, in its very first resolution, advocated the importance of nuclear disarmament and a nuclear weapon-free world. With this year’s award, the Norwegian Nobel Committee wishes to pay tribute to ICAN for giving new momentum to the efforts to achieve this goal.

The decision to award the Nobel Peace Prize for 2017 to the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons has a solid grounding in Alfred Nobel’s will. The will specifies three different criteria for awarding the Peace Prize: the promotion of fraternity between nations, the advancement of disarmament and arms control and the holding and promotion of peace congresses. ICAN works vigorously to achieve nuclear disarmament. ICAN and a majority of UN member states have contributed to fraternity between nations by supporting the Humanitarian Pledge. And through its inspiring and innovative support for the UN negotiations on a treaty banning nuclear weapons, ICAN has played a major part in bringing about what in our day and age is equivalent to an international peace congress.

It is the firm conviction of the Norwegian Nobel Committee that ICAN, more than anyone else, has in the past year given the efforts to achieve a world without nuclear weapons a new direction and new vigour.

Oslo, 6 October 2017

In his will, the pacifist Alfred Nobel left decisions about the Nobel Peace Prize to Norway. Norway was then a neutral country. However, for decades now Norway has been a member of the NATO military alliance.

Campaigning for a world free of nuclear weapons has never been more necessary

AWARDING the Nobel Peace Prize to the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons (ICAN) is welcome for rehabilitating the Norwegian Nobel Committee’s reputation and for emphasising the danger posed by these armaments.

The committee has a history of inappropriate awards, most notably to former US secretary of state Henry Kissinger.

Just last year it gave the prize to Colombian President Juan Manuel Santos to mark the country’s peace process while omitting the Farc liberation forces without whom he would have had no negotiating partner.

Still, credit where it’s due, the committee’s timing is immaculate given the menace posed by the US administration’s brinkmanship over relations with North Korea and Iran.

US media is speculating that President Donald Trump plans to announce some provocative action, possibly military, next week.

After dinner and discussions with senior military leaders at the White House on Thursday, he asked waiting media to guess the significance of their gathering.

“Maybe it’s the calm before the storm,” he suggested, teasing the media by replying to questions by saying: “You’ll find out.”

If he had been planning military strikes against North Korea, they might well have taken place by now already.

The longer the tension over the Korean peninsula has played out, the more the Pyongyang regime has tested and improved its arsenal, ensuring that a pre-emptive strike against North Korea would be met with retaliation against US and South Korean targets.

More likely is that Trump will signify his intention to pull the plug on the Iran nuclear deal, thus empowering the US Congress to reinstate economic sanctions on Iran.

His pretext for doing so is that the deal negotiated by the Barack Obama administration undermines US security interests.

The US president has previously declared that Tehran “supports terrorism and exports violence and chaos across the Middle East. That is why we must put an end to Iran’s continued aggression and nuclear ambitions. You will be hearing about Iran very shortly.”

The fact that none of this is true is irrelevant. Trump’s diatribe echoes the position of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who urged Barrack Obama not to sign the agreement and has not relented in efforts to persuade Trump to walk away from it.

The current president portrays himself as Israel’s greatest friend and is happy to retain a US ambassador to Tel Aviv who insists that only 2 per cent of Palestine’s West Bank is under zionist occupation.

Trump may anticipate broader political support if he plumps for Netanyahu’s belligerent stance, but the Iran nuclear deal is not a bilateral agreement. It is an international treaty under the auspices of the United Nations.

Apart from the US and Iran, Washington’s key European allies, together with Russia and China, are bound by it.

His Defence Secretary James Mattis has stated that he views the deal as in the US national interest, but Secretary of State Rex Tillerson has portrayed Tehran’s military backing for Syria as evidence of a failure to contribute positively to regional security, as though victory for Islamic State would have been preferable.

Trump’s infantile hints that military activity could be authorised some time next week confirm his erratic personality and reduce possible acts of war to a TV fake-reality game.

Anxiety about potential conflicts over Iran and Korea emphasises the need to campaign, along with ICAN, for the complete eradication of all nuclear weapons and, as Jeremy Corbyn says, “to avoid a nuclear apocalypse.”

OSLO (Reuters) – The anti-nuclear group which won the 2017 Nobel Peace Prize accused the United States, Britain and France on Wednesday of snubbing its disarmament work by planning to send only second-rank diplomats to the award ceremony next month.